Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:<p><a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/17/2025-election-peter-dutton-ignores-women/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">crikey.com.au/2025/04/17/2025-</span><span class="invisible">election-peter-dutton-ignores-women/</span></a></p><p><strong>QUOTE BEGINS</strong></p><p>In 2022, Scott Morrison made bungled, offensive comments about women. Three years later, Peter Dutton is just ignoring women altogether. </p><p>At a press conference on the campaign trail yesterday, Sydney Morning Herald reporter Olivia Ireland asked Peter Dutton a pointed question: What, exactly, does he plan on doing for “modern working women”? Dutton responded by saying his housing plan will help homeless women (questionable), and that in his 10 years as a cop and 24 years as a federal politician, he has “worked hard every day to keep women and young girls safe”.</p><p>This flubbed answer is part of a trend I’ve been tracking. Despite all politicians taking part in a new media and podcast blitz this election, Dutton has so far only appeared on one women’s podcast, Mamamia’s No Filter, declining invitations to be interviewed by other women on podcasts including Abbie Chatfield of It’s A Lot, Billi FitzSimons of The Daily Aus, and Hannah Ferguson of Big Small Talk.</p><p>By my count, it took until day 14 of the campaign for Dutton to be photographed with a young woman (who is not a member of, or candidate for, the Liberal Party), when he met workers at a manufacturing facility in Perth. He posted the photo to his social media accounts, making it only the second post to show Dutton with a young woman this year.</p><p>If that’s all just optics, news publication Women’s Agenda is hosting a debate on April 24 on the policy issues that matter most to Australian women. Labor’s Katy Gallagher, the Greens’ Larissa Waters and independent Allegra Spender are participating, but so far no-one from Dutton’s Coalition has agreed to appear. </p><p>Taken together, it certainly paints an image of a man — a very tough man, as his campaign keeps insisting — who is not only disengaged from women’s issues but, if we’re going by campaign mentions, seems barely aware that women can and will vote in this election. There is almost no effort being made to attempt to win us over. </p><p>Until yesterday, the only moment in the campaign when Dutton appeared to remember that women exist was when he reversed the Coalition’s promise to crack down on public servants working from home. Although even then, he was hardly front and centre. After learning the policy was going down like a lead balloon with working women, Dutton first sent out one of the party’s few female politicians, Jane Hume, to take the first bite of crow on his behalf. </p><p>As Ireland rightly pointed out in her question, the only time Dutton mentioned women in his campaign launch speech was when he said the Coalition would protect them from domestic violence and crime. Positioning crime, particularly youth crime, as a women’s safety issue has been a common framing from the Coalition throughout the election — in fact, as the days tick by, it looks like that’s all it’s got.</p><p>Can you win an election by taking this disinterested attitude to half the voting population?</p><p>We’ve seen this film before in 2022, and the answer was a resounding “no”. The women’s vote was a huge factor in Scott Morrison’s loss, with the Liberal Party’s own review admitting its disastrous election outcome was primarily because “the prime minister was not attuned to the concerns of women”. The review considered the women’s vote so important — and the party’s relationship with women voters in such tatters — that it included a set of recommendations to increase women’s representation in party membership and Parliament (you might even say they were DEI initiatives).</p><p>Yet under Dutton, the Coalition has done little to address these issues. </p><p>Strangely, in last week’s episode of the Crikey Electioncast, columnist Rachel Withers explained that many of the polling analysts she has spoken to don’t believe those same “anti-Scott Morrison factors” are at play in this election. </p><p>Dutton’s obsession with a masculinised narrative bamboozled the commentariat in the lead-up to the election, prompting them to focus on a narrative imported straight from the US presidential election: that young men radicalised to the new right would propel Dutton to the Lodge. Or Kirribilli House, as is his preference.</p><p>The Australian polling data never really bore that out. Sure, among Coalition voters, there are more young men than young women, as has been the case since the late ’90s. But at least two polls have shown young men are more likely to give their primary vote to Labor than the Coalition. Indeed, the finding by Resolve Political Monitor is striking for how resoundingly it debunks the premature storytelling: “After [men 18-34] nominate their preferences, the result in two-party terms is that Labor leads by 62 to 38% against the Coalition.”</p><p>Nevertheless, it’s clear Dutton initially thought he had a path through. Where Morrison made bungled, offensive comments about women, Dutton would just avoid the subject altogether. Corporate media followed his lead, missing the story that this could be a repeat of 2022 after all: for at least the past year, women have never preferred the Coalition over Labor on a two-party preferred basis, apart from a brief blip in early 2025. </p><p>Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception. The Coalition is in opposition this time, so women voters won’t be the reason Dutton will lose government. But if he loses the election, they’ll almost certainly be a big reason why.</p><p>The longer the Liberal Party — whatever mangled version of it remains after May 3 — refuses to address how it engages with women, the worse its future looks.</p><p>Of course the Libs aren’t the only ones who need to evolve: an increasing number of young women say they’ll give the Greens their primary vote, with preferences ultimately flowing to Labor. Just like in 2022, if Labor wins off the back of the women’s vote, it will not be an endorsement of Albanese’s government so much as a rejection of the alternative. There are lessons here for all.</p><ul><li>Crystal Andrews is Crikey’s readers’ editor. She is also the founder of Zee Feed, a digital media outlet producing feminist commentary on news, social issues, digital and pop culture for young Australian women. </li></ul><p><strong>QUOTE ENDS</strong></p><p><a href="https://infosec.space/tags/AusPol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AusPol</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ClimateCrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateCrisis</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/WomensRights" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WomensRights</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ShitParty1" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ShitParty1</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ShitParty2" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ShitParty2</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/FsckOffDutton" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FsckOffDutton</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/WhyIsLabor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WhyIsLabor</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/NoNukes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NoNukes</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/VoteGreens" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>VoteGreens</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ProgIndies" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ProgIndies</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/OzElection2025" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>OzElection2025</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/IncludeAdam" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>IncludeAdam</span></a></p>